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New Braunfels Herald Zeitung (Newspaper) - November 26, 2000, New Braunfels, Texas
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Vol. 150, No. 13 44 pages in 4 sections November 26, 2000
Sunday
Serving Comal County since 1852
v&m i $1.00
Inside
► Red Raider
Texas Tech sophomore quarterback and former New Braunfels quarterback Kliff Kingsbury earned a spot on the second team All-Big 12./1B
► Diabetes info
The Institute for Public Health and Research in New Braunfels is writing a prescription for diabetic patients to lead longer and better lives./! C
Smith to direct Advent Vespers
From Staff Reports
Tim Smith will step onstage at 4 p.m. today to direct the 41st annual Advent Vespers Massed Choir Concert at First Baptist Church on Cross Street Smith will continue the tradition begun by the late Melitta Frueh, who died in June at age 82.
This year’s concert is a fulfillment of a promise made by friends of Frueh to keep the tradition alive, and also is dedicated to Frueh’s memory by the New Braunfels Music Study Club.
Smith, organist and choir director at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in San Antonio, has rehearsed with the local music group, and is set to direct the concert this after- * noon.
David Getty will perform a prelude on trumpet, and the Cross Lutheran Handbell Choir will perform as well. The concert will be broadcast on KGNB and will be televised on TCI Cablevi-sion at a later date.
The public is invited to attend this concert, enjoy the “sacred music of Christmas,” and honor the memory of the concert’s founder, Melitta Frueh.
SMITH
Index
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Abby.............................................2C
Business................................5-6B
Classified................................1-12D
Stammtisch..................................3C
Forum...........................................7A
Local/Metro..................................,4A
Obituaries.................................3A
Sports....................................1-4B
Today............................................2A
Television...........................TV Week
www.herald-zeitung.com
K»y cod# 77Officials continue quest for alcohol ban
By Jo Lee Ferguson Staff Writer
The search for a way to ban alcohol on New Braunfels rivers continues despite a setback before the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission in October.
Earlier this year, trouble with behavior on local rivers prompted a petition drive for an alcohol ban on the rivers.
The petition drive led the city council to submit a request to the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission for a central river
business district on the Comal and Guadalupe Rivers inside the city limits.
The council asked for a ban on open alcoholic beverage containers and consumption of alcohol inside the business district.
However, the TABC expressed doubt about whether the city’s proposal met the definition of a central business district as defined by law.
The three-member TABC commission took no vote on the issue in October, but indicated it probably would not approve
KENDRICK
implementing it
the proposal as written.
Since then, Councilman Robert Kendrick and others have continued to look for ways to implement that ban.
“It’s still alive and well, and we’re working on it,” Kendrick said. “It’s not going to be dropped until all pos-sible legal ways of are explored.
“If it’s impossible to be done, then the next thing will be to make sure that if we on the local level are going to have to provide enforcement for something that they basically tell us we don’t have any authority over, they’re going to have to come in and help us.”
Kendrick and City Attorney Floyd Akers recently met with TABC General Counsel Lou Bright to discuss the issue.
Kendrick said Texas Senator Judith Zaf-firini, D-Laredo, also attended the meeting.
See ALCOHOL/5A
We’ve moved
Comal County Clerk relocates to Annex
RON MALONEY/Herald-Zeitung
County employees (above) will no longer have offices in the courthouse building. They now have a larger space in the County Courthouse Annex next door. County Clerk Joy Streator (below) said her department was forced by growth in the area to move to a larger facility.
By Ron Maloney Staff Writer
Comal County and New Braunfels have been growing for decades. Once a sleepy backwater between Austin and San Antonio, this is now one of the fastest-growing regions in Texas.
For local governments, the situation has been much the same.
A county government once housed entirely in the Comal County Courthouse on the Main Plaza has pushed outward during the last two decades.
In the nearly eight years since County Clerk Joy Streater took off ice, her department has grown from an old time, paper-pushing and filing archive to an automated powerhouse, processing, with a staff of IO, 500 documents in one day.
The way they have done it is by computerization.
“Automation has allowed us to do this,” Streater said. “We enter their documents today, and pass them right back over the counter to the people they belong to.”
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Soon, Streater her staff and their computer system will be doing it somewhere else.
For the first time since there has been a Comal County Courthouse, there will not be a County Clerk’s office there.
Streater’s operation, except for the
county courts upstairs and Linnell Hinojosa’s election offices, will move next door to the County Courthouse Annex.
The vacated space will be used for meetings and as a polling place.
Streater’s is far from the first department forced by growth to move out of the historic and ornate but cramped County Courthouse.
Old timers at the Sheriffs’ Office can remember when the Comal County Jail was located in the courthouse, just upstairs from the court system that sent over inmates.
In the 1980s, the Courthouse Annex was built next door. More recently, the county tax assessor/collector’s offices moved across Seguin Avenue, leaving the first floor of the Annex vacant except during elections.
This year, a branch county office was constructed in Sattler, and others are planned.
And as soon as county carpenter
See MO VE/5 A
GORE
BUSH
Drainage ordinance set for hearing
By Jo Lee Ferguson Staff Writer
The New Braunfels City Council will conduct a public hearing on a proposed drainage ordinance Monday.
The hearing is during the council’s 6:30 p.m. meeting at the New Braunfels Municipal Building, 424 S. Casten Ave. Third and final approval of the ordinance will be considered later in the meeting.
Councilman Robert Kendrick previously said he opposed one of two new fees pro
posed in the ordinance. The fee is now called the drainage utility fee for existing improved property, although it was originally called the watershed management utility fee.
“To me, a fee is something that has to do with usage, primarily,” Kendrick said. “Things that are for the general good to me should be paid for with taxes.”
T he proposed ordinance states that the drainage utility fee would recover the city’s cost of service for furnishing drainage.
The second fee is a storm water development fee for new developments.
The two fees would be used to maintain the city’s drainage system, to pay for the design, study and engineering of a storm water program and to pay for construction of drainage facilities.
Kendrick said the development fee was valid because the people paying it would be connecting to existing infrastructure.
“But the other form of fees ... would
See DRAINAGES
Palm Beach board toils in overtime
Gore promises to challenge outcome
By Karin Meadows
Associated Press Writer
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Weary, crabby and still facing thousands of disputed presidential ballots, Palm Beach County election officials worked overtime to meet a Sunday recount deadline.
Frustrated Democrats, who asked for the count in the first place, said they will contest the outcome.
“You may be here all night,” canvassing board member Carol Roberts warned reporters early Saturday. It was a warning that turned out to be well founded. The board agreed to work straight through the night.
The board will send partial results to the state if it fails to complete the hand count by 5 p.m. EST Sunday, although the state canvassing board hadn’t decided whether to accept partial totals.
“We’re going to have to make a determination on it,” said Ben McKay, spokesman for the secretary of state.
The three county board members, all Democrats, have examined more than 2,000 of some 9,500 ballots in dispute because voting machines could not clearly read a presidential choice. The results released so far, from 305 of 637 precincts overall, have disappointed Democrats who had hoped to pick up hundreds of additional votes for Al Gore.
By evening, the partial recount figures released by the board had given Republican George W. Bush a net gain of IO votes over the last machine count.
Bill Buck, a Democratic Party spokesman, said party observers have Gore up 78 votes, based on 415 precincts counted. Bush spokesman Scott McClellan estimated that Gore had a net gain of 86 votes through 428 precincts.
Whatever the result, it will be challenged. Gore lawyer David Boies said Palm Beach County will be added to others where the vice president will contest the results because Democrats want a looser standard for count-
See RECOUNT/5A
Drainage
Ordinance
■ Would declare system to be a public utility
■ Developer of property responsible for storm drainage
■ Upon approval, would go into effect after 60 days
■ Drainage utility fee and stormwater development fee to pay for maintaining system
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